Howard put himself into a club chair, his bulky overcoat which he had not unbuttoned wedging him, and his muffler suddenly feeling as if it was choking him. Perspiration had broken out on his forehead and it wasn’t just due to this overheated room. Something was terribly wrong.

Lisl sat down opposite him, her fingers pleating the embroidered apron she was wearing, and her plump face creased with distress. ‘Ben, he does not wish to see you, Howard.’

A silence followed during which Howard’s tongue seemed glued to the roof of his mouth and the part of him that wasn’t numbed took an inventory of the setting in which the indictment was pronounced.

Gleaming white paintwork and a wood block floor. A coffee table, with magazines neatly piled upon it. A sofa, blue like the chairs and the rug. A vase of yellow chrysanthemums on the broad window ledge, and a bust that could be Beethoven, on a corner pedestal. The gloomy oil paintings in ornate gilt frames, that had hung in the Schmidts’ hall. A photograph of Christina’s father atop an upright piano, on which some sheet music was propped.

‘Who’s the musician?’ he asked as detachedly as he had surveyed the room.

‘Your son.’

My son who doesn’t want to see me.

‘Ben, he is having lessons. Did he not tell that to you on the telephone?’

Why would he bother telling me?

‘He did not put away the music after he has this morning practised,’ Lisl went on, adding with a smile, ‘but for once he has remembered to close the piano.’

The smile did not remain long on her face and a sigh accompanied her next words. ‘Today he did not just to close it, with a crash he did it. It was fortunate that Christina and Hans they had already left to go to Uncle Ernst’s and Aunt Elsa’s diamond wedding celebration.’

Uncle Ernst the one-time SS officer, Howard registered with the once-removed feeling that was helping him get through this.

‘It is a luncheon at their house,’ Lisl told him. ‘All Christina’s cousins have come from other cities, together with their children. There has been much excitement in the family, and Ben’s little brother and sister they have for the occasion new clothing. Ben also, and when you telephoned to tell to Christina that today you were coming – Ben, he has been beside himself with the disappointment.’

Howard said stiffly, ‘If Christina had mentioned it, I’d have put off my visit until next week.’